Earth Sciences: Year In Review 2013

Meteorology and Climate

Wintry weather lasted well into spring 2013 in both North America and Europe. Heavy snow buried large swaths of both continents from February into March as the jet stream remained well south of normal across the Atlantic Basin. The season’s total snowfall in Moscow was 50% above normal, and the city’s snow depth of 77 cm (30 in) on March 26 was the greatest in 20 years. England experienced its coldest March-to-May interval since 1891.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, winter in the contiguous U.S., extending from December 2012 to February 2013, was the 19th mildest in 119 years of record keeping. The spring of 2013, however, was the coldest in the U.S. since 1996. This contrasted sharply with 2012, which had the warmest spring on record.

Record heat also visited southern and eastern China during July and August, with China noting its hottest August of record. Japan noted its all-time highest temperature (41 °C [106 °F] at Ekawasaki) on August 12 as part of the country’s hottest summer on record. Earlier, Australia recorded its hottest January and hottest summer (December–February) ever.

One of many notable snowstorms in the U.S. dropped up to 91 cm (about 36 in) of snow in south-central Connecticut on February 8–9, setting an all-time 24-hour state record. Another storm deposited 48 cm (19 in) on Amarillo, Texas, on February 25, setting a February daily record. In addition, Wichita, Kan., notched its snowiest month ever, and unprecedented May Day snowstorms blanketed the central United States from Oklahoma to Wisconsin, where up to 46 cm (18 in) fell. More than 30 cm (1 ft) of snow fell on May 25–26 in the mountains of New York and Vermont.

The number of tornadoes in the U.S. in 2013 (estimated at some 900) was two-thirds of the five-year average of 1,352 and one of the lowest on record. Two devastating tornado outbreaks, however, struck Oklahoma in May. An EF5 on May 20 ravaged Moore, leaving 24 dead and 1,100 houses destroyed. An EF3 on May 31 struck El Reno, west of Oklahoma City, taking 8 lives, including those of 4 storm chasers. The El Reno tornado, at 4.2 km (2.6 mi) in diameter, was the widest tornado on record. Over 60 tornadoes struck the Ohio Valley on November 17, taking six lives in Illinois. An EF4 devastated the town of Washington, Illinois.

The period of June through August ranked as the 15th warmest summer in the contiguous U.S. Less-than-normal amounts of precipitation fell across most of the West during winter and spring, and drought conditions persisted across much of the area. California noted its driest January-to-May period on record. The heat and dryness contributed to major wildfires in the spring and summer, including the “Rim” fire in California, which scorched 104,000 ha (257,000 ac). Nevertheless, total burned acreage in the U.S.—1.6 million ha (4 million ac)—was less than half the amount burned in 2012. In contrast, the Northeast experienced its second wettest summer, and the Southeast experienced its wettest summer, since records began to be kept.

Frequent flash floods struck cities from Las Vegas to Philadelphia between July and September, culminating in the historic floods that ravaged Colorado’s Front Range communities. The 231 mm (9.08 in) of rain measured in Boulder during September 12–13 nearly doubled the previous 24-hour record, and the 367 mm (14.46 in) of precipitation measured in four days (September 11–14) broke all monthly records. Rampaging rivers flooded parts of 18 cities and towns, marooning thousands of people, leaving at least 10 dead, and destroying 1,800 homes. Ironically, just three months earlier, abnormal heat and dryness had contributed to Colorado’s “Black Forest” fire, the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history.

Heavy rains in late May also triggered historic flooding in central Europe. Phenomenal monsoon rains—some 59 cm (23 in) during two days in June—battered northern India (Uttarakhand), setting off massive flooding and landslides, which resulted in more than 5,000 deaths. Two September hurricanes that struck Mexico’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts almost simultaneously caused flooding, landslides, and the deaths of more than 165 people. The Atlantic Basin, however, was unusually tranquil, with 13 named storms, but only two hurricanes. This was the fewest number of hurricanes since 1982.

Numerous typhoons affected large numbers of people in the western Pacific, including Wipha, which lashed the Tokyo area with torrential rains and damaging winds on October 15. Phenomenal rains of 824 mm (32.44 in) over a 24-hour period unleashed a landslide that took at least 22 lives on Oshima Island, 120 km (75 mi) south of Tokyo. Five days earlier Cyclone Phailin, a category 3 storm, caused massive damage along the eastern coast of India, killing at least 45.

The strongest cyclone during the year (Super Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda), and one of the most powerful to ever make landfall, brought catastrophic destruction to the central Philippine islands on November 8, injuring over 26,000, leaving about 8,000 either dead or missing, and damaging or destroying more than one million houses.

Pres. Barack Obama presented his “Climate Action Plan” on June 25, which was designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, shore up coastlines against flooding, and help advance an international climate agreement. The plan targeted a 17% cut in American greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

In 2013 observed levels of carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million in June, an increase of nearly 40% from preindustrial levels. Most climatologists continued to blame greenhouse gas emissions for much of the warming trend over the past century, and a study by American, Canadian, Australian, and Norwegian scientists showed a distinct “fingerprint” of human-caused warming in the pattern of atmospheric temperature change.

In August Canadian scientists announced that recent observed global warming had been “significantly less than that simulated by climate models,” with no statistically significant warming in the past 15 years. The cause of the leveling off of the global surface-temperature trend over the previous 12–16 years, however, fostered much discussion. A modeling study released in September by American and Australian scientists examining “hiatus” decades versus decades characterized by rapid warming found that oceanic processes at the surface and in deep water do play a key role in moderating climate. During these intervals the negative (cold) phase of the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO) overwhelms the warming from greenhouse gases, generating a zero-warming trend for periods of up to 15 years. The IPO is a longer-term version of La Niña resulting in below-average sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Deepwater circulation patterns originating in the Atlantic Ocean and in the waters surrounding Antarctica also played a role; warming continues during such periods, though it is focused deep below the ocean surface.

The first part of the fifth installment of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report came out in September. The projected warming range was slightly reduced at the lower end, suggesting that a doubling of CO2 would produce a warming of at least 1.5 °C rather than 2 °C, the average temperature increase stated in the previous (2007) report. Projected sea-level increases for the end of the century (2081–2100) rose from the previous report, ranging from 0.26 to 0.66 m (10 to 26 in) for the low-emission scenario to 0.45 to 0.98 m (18 to 39 in) for the scenario that assumed high emission rates. Preparers of the document called on the world to keep to a cumulative anthropogenic (human-caused) carbon release of less than 1,000 gigatons of carbon (GtC) since preindustrial times, a limit designed to avoid an increase in average global temperature of 2 °C. Between preindustrial times and 2011, more than 531 GtC had been released.

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